Loving the Rock

I really feel as if I shouldn't like Gibraltar, but I do. It's kind of wrong, but I feel curiously at home there. My other half has a theory that I like it because it's a bit like Britain in the 70s, so I'm anticipating the point when the 80s finally hit and I can enjoy the hair, clothes and music all over again. He may be right, but it isn't surprising that I enjoy visiting the rock. The road signs in English start it all off when you cross the border. You could be anywhere in the U.K. Well, you are in the U.K., technically, and you can speak English freely and be understood, which feels like a cooling and soothing balm applied to the brain for those whose Spanish is as deficient as mine. The runway helps, too. After crossing the border you have to cross an active airport runway to get into the main town, which feels about as eccentrically English as you could possibly get.

In so many ways the rock is geared up to be an English playground in the sun. Tax free alcohol, abundant casinos, a marina full of extremely expensive looking yachts and pretty much guaranteed warm, sunny weather. What's not to like? Add to this the presence of a giant Morrison's, who have big signs enticing you to buy “the taste of home”, and you start to see why so many people cling with gusto to this little piece of the U.K jutting out from the southern end of Spain. Morrison's means I can have scones with butter and sip an Orange Ovaltine Options drink on our balcony in Santa Margarita, watching the blue sea and African mountains in the distance. Morrison's means I can still procure Quorn to eat in a land where they don't seem to understand vegetarianism. I'm a big fan of the Morrison's. In the heat of a Gibraltar afternoon there's a sense of unreality when you step into a generic English supermarket that could be anywhere, heading for the Quorn aisle.

Leave aside the modern convenience of meat substitutes and there's that aforementioned 70s vibe. It's there subtly in the architecture, though most of the tower blocks and offices sport a liberal use of concrete that gives away their 50s origin. It's more present in the host of small shops along main street, especially independent electrical retailers, named after people rather than big retail chains. Yes, there is a Marks and Spencer, but it hasn't had a makeover for some time and it looks traditional and old, like the St. Michael era shops of my childhood. Visiting museums and tourist attractions confronts you with signs and boards of printed information rather than interactive, whizzy computerised exhibits. A trip up to the top of the rock reveals a healthy and very un-twenty first century disregard for health and safety. There seem to be perilous staircases, tiny clifftop paths and abandoned bits of military building everywhere, few of them fenced of and all of them looking very inviting to anyone with a reckless streak. Actually one of the things that I liked most about the Rock itself was the sense of physical cold war structures and the mindset that went with them decaying all around. Faded “M.O.D. - Keep Out” signs and hefty security gates with big padlocks now swinging open, nobody guarding them and no secrets for them to protect any more. No more spies, only monkeys.

It would be very easy to surrender to this other world, removed from the everyday realities of bad English weather, unreliable public transport and the general petty woe of living in a place that isn't shiny, sunny and fun. I feel the temptation acutely because I'm here on holiday, so I'm in that fantasy fun and frolic-ful mindset from the start. The jolly retirees who were sat at the next table to us at lunch on the waterfront on Sunday were probably feeling the same way, lingering over their cocktails and forgetting the way the damp weather used to make their rheumatism flare up. Even if you're working on the rock, as my other half is, you slip into a routine where the bizarre, absurd and even the indulgent become normal. He gets up, he cycles into the U.K., he works, sometimes a monkey scampers by the window, he cycles back home to Spain and we go off to the beach for a quick dip in the Mediterranean before dinner. The hypnotic weather and the ever present sandy shoreline all too easily take a hold of you. Living a stones throw away from a thriving colony of barbary apes stops you taking anything too seriously and the knowledge that you live in a place of strategic military significance, even though the presence of the armed forces is currently dwindling, gives you a sense of security. Those bunkers are still deep within the Rock – the troops could be back in the blink of an eye. It's all good.

What, then, could be dangerous about liking Gibraltar too much? To confine oneself to this part of Europe because it allows you to relish in the comfort of the familiar is to abandon oneself to the attractiveness of escapism – to enter your fantasy land where the sun always shines and life is very easy. It might blind me to the pleasures of Spain, of which there are many. I could easily become short-sighted and cower in the Rock's familiar shadow rather than realising I am actually abroad and there is another culture out there waiting to be explored. Also, I am on holiday. I get to see Gibraltar in all its high season, pleasure palace glory. It's easy for me to forget that there is a world of daily reality underneath the shiny exterior, a world where problems exist and boredom takes hold in just the same ways as at home. Even if there are monkeys. A place so small and so resolutely separate from the Spain that lives beside it has its own attendant troubles, too. After a while I can see how the Rock might get a bit stifling. It is small and it is so very English. It has limits. So I'll appreciate Gibraltar as a linguistic haven, a place to have fun and drink reasonably priced gin and tonic and I'll not let the sun go to my head. I'll keep my feet on the ground and not get too carried away with heady holiday pleasures, or with getting lost on tracks up the Rock and pretending I'm a Russian spy on a mission. And if Gibraltar ever does enter the 80s, I might consider a permanent move.